Please Forgive the Rant

Warning, this blog is going to degenerate into a rant immediately!

I wish all my "friends" and loving "family" members could see me today, better yet, jump into my brain and realize how it feels to have FTD. I may as well include caregivers in there too. It truly is impossible for anyone who does not have FTD to realize just how much and how devastatingly this disease affects those of us with it. I know many try and actually think they do, but you can't, just as no one can fully understand the strain of being a caregiver. I have been both. I would voluntarily be a caregiver again. I would never volunteer to have this disease again, even if there was a way to go back and not have FTD.

I feel like I am falling apart. My daughter and I are still living in her one-bedroom apartment and will be for another two months. She is also working from home most days and of course, thank you FTD, I forget to be quiet and not interrupt her with questions about what she is doing. No impulse control here.

I feel like the world is falling apart around me. All the hatred being spewed. I do not remember any election becoming as full of hatred as this one has. I can't help but look back at the first presidential election I can remember... Kennedy vs Nixon. Now there was a hullabaloo about the horror of possibly electing a Catholic, but that was even handled with complete decorum compared to this one. The taunts I remember are "Nixon, Nixon, he's my man. Kennedy belongs in a garbage can."  I heard it just as frequently the other way around. As I aged, I still knew of politicians reaching across the aisle to work for the common good. That is a far as I dare delve into politics. I only raise the dangerous subject to explain how all the dissension affects me and piles on the stress to my FTD burden. 

I mention it partly to explain how, this week, when I went to get my new driver's license and was given the opportunity to register to vote in my new state. I was terrified when it was time to declare my political party. As it was, I whispered it to the agent so no one would overhear me. To me, it is pathetic that I had to feel that way. It actually helped when she laughed at me.

I have just one family member living near me (excepting my daughter and sister) who has stood by me through my battle with FTD. She would pick up on when I was feeling down and she would come by the house to help or just visit with her fiance's child who, by the way, looked adorable in his face mask! Yes, it was technically a violation of the stay at home orders, but it was a medical emergency in my mind. Now that I am several states away, she is going through an extremely difficult time and I am not there to stand by her side. So now we add self-imposed guilt into my frame of mind.

Yes, I try to provide support via phone and social media, but it isn't the same. To top it off, she is 3+ months pregnant and a high risk for carrying to term. Thinking about it, it is probably better that I am not there because I would probably be arrested for attacking the other family members who are unreasonably causing the hardships on someone they should be loving and caring for, especially right now.

With all this that I am stressing over, whether justified or not, trying to make choices for the new house we are having built is way too overwhelming. My daughter has her ideas of what colors to paint and I have mine. She has her ideas of what furniture to use and where to put it. It would be ideal to buy new things for a new house, but with more than two households full of everything, it just does not make sense. I don't even want to think about trying to decide how to arrange furniture and such. Already, during a walk through of the house, the project manager mentioned an open area and I said "Oh, good, a place to put pretties." My daughter scoffed and said "Not your pretties!"

I did have a break through today while trying to agree on wall colors. Nine years after being diagnosed with FTD, I discovered it IS possible to cry. It is also possible to curl up into a fetal position while you do, but FTD has never prevented me from doing that. I finally came to the conclusion that my daughter must allow me to select the colors for the rooms in my part of the house and I will allow her to choose the ones for her rooms. The common rooms will be a warm shade of neutral, a vanilla choice really, as that is the name of the paint. That's as close as I can get to being humorous today and that is only pathetically humorous.

I also must add that I am greatly worried about an FTD friend who is worsening rapidly. It is probably more frustrating for me when I am worried about any of my FTD friends than when I am worried for myself. For myself, I seem to be able to go along with "It is what it is" mentality, but not so when it comes to others.

It doesn't help that I just came off a multi-day FTD headache either. At least today I can actually exist without drugs. Oh, and while trying to work through the headache, I burned myself, as I tend to do. forgetting things are hot. Things like that, things that FTD'ers do nearly constantly, make me angry at myself and angry at the world. 

So, why did I wrote this blog entry knowing that it was going to be a rant against everyone and everything? The answer is simple. This is a look into the mind of someone with FTD... constant frustration, much anger, much hopelessness, some paranoia and pain gets thrown in as well. To top it off, I couldn't remember how to go back and correct my typos and ended up deleting entire paragraphs that I had to try to remember so I could rewrite them. 

Ah, yes, FTD how I love thee... no I don't.